One of the strengths of the hedge fund business is that it welcomes and incubates many disparate perspectives. Emigres from far-flung fields and disciplines often find homes at alternative investment firms, and the success of many of these market players is testament not only to their particular talents, but also to the industry's flexibility.

Nowhere is that diversity more apparent than in the growth of Boston-based GMB Capital Management, which has built its trading strategy around the theory of optimal pricing developed by chief investment officer Gabriel Bitran, formerly vice dean of the MIT Sloan School, and implemented by his son, portfolio manager Marco Bitran.

As the name implies, the field of optimal pricing is, according to Marco Bitran, dedicated to helping companies price their goods -- such as hotel rooms -- optimally. For its part, GMB utilizes a quantitative trading model that applies optimal pricing theory to financial markets through its flagship macro fund, GMB Global Alpha Fund LP.

The firm's strategy certainly seems to have found a profitable niche. Since its launch in August 2006, the fund has generated a compound annualized return of nearly 15 percent (through September 2007) and increased assets under management to $70 million. Since the Bitrans began managing capital from friends and family back in January 1998, the strategy has netted a 21.3 percent annualized return and spawned a flex-leveraged version of the flagship that brings firmwide assets to $150 million, according to the father/son pair.

Marco Bitran came to GMB after stints as a manager of a global equity sector fund at Wellington Management Co. and as an investment banking analyst and equity researcher at Morgan Stanley. He earned a B.S. degree in electrical engineering from MIT and an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School.

While Bitran had what he called "a great experience" at Wellington, he left the firm in May 2006 for the opportunity to work with his father and satisfy his entrepreneurial aspirations. At GMB, he focuses on running the firm's portfolio and overseeing all operating issues relating to the portfolio, while his father develops the firm's models. GMB recently hired a CFO, Kirstin Anderson, from Deloitte & Touche.